


Honey and the Bee

by KatsukiSin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bees, Castiel Loves Bees, Castiel's Past, Character Study, Concerned Balthazar, Gen, Heaven being messed up, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Insanity, Pre-Series Castiel (Supernatural), Re-Education, Time Line?, brief insanity, does it count as hurt no comfort if the character doesn't remember being hurt?, i think, what time line?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29498013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatsukiSin/pseuds/KatsukiSin
Summary: An insight into Castiel's relationship with bees over the years.
Kudos: 9





	Honey and the Bee

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if this needs trigger warnings but just in case:  
> Blood mentions, brief insanity, and heavily implied torture. Let me know if I missed anything.

  
  


_ ‘The interesting thing about bees,’  _ Castiel thought, ‘ _ is that they are everything I am not.’ _

The angel jolted. What an absurd, nonsensical idea. Perhaps he had spent too much time in a vessel, dwelling amongst humans, for it seemed like their quirky abstraction was beginning to influence him in unseemly ways. 

Still, Castiel paused to look at the bee that had landed on his vessel’s shoulder. 

It was an incredibly foolish mistake on the honeybee’s part. Did it not know how easily the angel could kill it? Even a human would have very little trouble swatting and crushing the insect into nothing. And there was little to be gained on his vessel’s shoulder, either-- not a morsel of food, water, or general stimulation that would justify taking such a risk. And the bee could have at least taken the initiative to land in a place where it would not be so easily noticed. 

No angel would dare make such fatuous oversights. They were fearless warriors with God’s righteousness burning and radiating within them, so any mistaken, disobedient, or ill-prepared act on an angel’s part would be to directly flout God’s image. Such action, of course, would be severely and justly punished. 

Castiel watched as the bee flexed its wings, the transparent appendages twitching before it took to the air. He wondered where the bee would find itself next-- on a flower? On the shoulder of another human? Within the walls of its hive? 

It must be a horrible existence, Castiel decided, living a life in which you did not know what was expected of you. To live not knowing where you were going or how you were meant to get there. 

Bees weren’t anything like angels. That must be what his previous erratic thought had been meant to convey. 

* * *

Castiel was not sure he would ever get used to how  _ small  _ everything in the Earthly plane of existence was. 

When angels were created, the fledglings started small before growing and growing and growing with every second that they were alive. The concept of being alive was synonymous with being in a state of growth; you could not have one without the other in Heaven.

That was not how it worked on Earth, however. Most species simply  _ stopped  _ growing after only a few years of life. Castiel had wondered on more than one occasion if the creatures on Earth were truly alive after they had reached their so-called ‘maximum height.’ When a mortal stopped growing, were they nothing more than a dead shell roving across the Earth? Perhaps that was why his brothers and sisters held little remorse for the creatures on the mortal plane-- you couldn’t kill or hurt what was already dead. Castiel still wasn’t sure he completely agreed with the sentiment. Yes, it was very odd that mortal bodies stopped growing, but mortal souls continued to shine with light just as bright and warm despite the physical deficiency. He had to admit that he was not an expert in the connection between the body and soul, considering he had neither, but Castiel was certain there must be some significance there. 

Everything on Earth seemed pitifully small and underdeveloped. 

It made sense when you stopped to think about it. There was only so much space available on the surface of the planet, after all. Sacrifices would have to be made to ensure the large variety of life on the planet could continue to survive. 

But how could something be alive and  _ not growing?  _ So much wasted potential. And surely it would be unsettling to come across a creature that was bigger and stronger than yourself. 

Castiel would never say it aloud, but he did doubt the practicality of this aspect of his Father’s Creation. Another thing he would never say aloud: everything on the mortal plane must be absolutely brimming with bravery if they could survive in such an uncertain and stagnant existence. 

The mortals might even be braver than angels. 

* * *

Castiel watched the bees fly from flower to flower.

His wing was still aching, and the throbbing pulses were just as constant a presence as the buzzing of the bees’ wings. 

He knew that he should feel lucky. He should be thanking God and repenting his insolence.

He didn’t regret what he had done, though. He was only sorry that he had failed. 

New creations were roaming the Earth now, and they had not been made by God. There were only a small number of them, but they were swift, large, and brutal. Their jaws were strong, and their teeth were sharp and broad like blades. They were relentless and unafraid. Castiel supposed they must be terrifying to the mortals, whose eyes could not see the gnashing teeth and claws that chased them, that exposed nerve and bone and sank deep into their souls. Angels could see the newly made creations with no difficulty, which might have made the hounds less unsettling if it weren’t for the saliva that seared and dimmed an angel’s Grace. 

There weren’t very many of Lucifer’s hounds roaming the Earth, but they were causing a lot of trouble. Heaven had decided that the creatures needed to be banished into Hell. 

It was supposed to be a simple affair, except Heaven had also decided that the best way to do so would be to use humans as bait.

Castiel had been aware that there might be a few casualties among the humans, and the thought had left his Grace in uncomfortable knots and twists, but he had told himself that the deaths of a small number of humans would be an honorable sacrifice as long as it meant Lucifer’s hounds would be stopped. Castiel had not been expecting his brothers and sisters to stand by as entire cities were ripped into bloody shreds. He had been told that his brethren hoped the carnage would attract all of the hounds to one location so they could be banished all at once, rather than one by one. 

He had been ordered to wait until all the hounds had been lured in, and he almost had. But there had been a human, screaming and small, and Castiel knew he would be able to save the human easily. Just a few flaps of his wings there, a hand on the human’s shoulder, a few more flaps and he could deposit the human at a safe distance and be back in position before anyone even noticed he was gone. He hadn’t seen the hound until it was too late, its claws raking across his wing and throwing him to the side. 

He should feel lucky that the hound had busied itself with the human instead of turning to him.

He should feel lucky that he had only been injured with claws and not with teeth. It wouldn’t be pleasant to have that venomous saliva attacking his Grace.

He should feel lucky that Anna had gotten to him in time, had flown him to this field of flowers with the hissed order to wait there instead of sending him directly to Heaven for punishment. 

He didn’t feel lucky. But he could feel the sticky, hot, and heavy blood of the human he had failed to save coating his vessel, even though he had used his Grace to ensure the vessel was completely cleaned of the red substance. 

Castiel watched the bees fly from flower to flower. 

The bees do what is expected of them. They go from one flower to another, collecting nectar and making honey, and protecting the queen. The bees are obedient, never hesitating or questioning. 

_ ‘It would be nice if they could tell me what I’m doing wrong,’  _ Castiel thought.  _ ‘If they could tell me why I can never follow orders the way everyone wants me to.’ _

Castiel wished he could mindlessly flit from flower to flower, from objective to objective, the way that the bees seem able to do. But deep down, he knew he couldn't. His head felt heavy and thick in a way he was not used to. 

All those people…

Castiel could hear their prayers in his head even now: frantic, defeated, hopeful, bitter, terrified. They were heartbreaking, especially since most of them were prematurely cut off.

His brethren would be able to hear them too, but the prayers kept coming. Castiel knew that there were enough of them to neutralize the hounds currently attacking, so the continued prayers meant his siblings were doing nothing. 

God had told them all to love the humans. Was this love, then? Standing by and doing nothing as you let your ‘loved ones’ be slaughtered? Were loved ones so easily thrown away and replaced? Was love stoicism and apathy in the faces of the needy? Could this be God’s will?

It had to be. Angels had been created with no other purpose in mind than to fulfil His will. They were incapable of doing anything but His will-- everyone knew that. 

Of course… if that were true… that would imply that Lucifer’s Fall from Heaven had been God’s will. That would imply Castiel breaking rank would be God’s will, too...

No, Castiel was sure that didn’t make sense. Why would God have wanted Lucifer to Fall? How could God’s will be simultaneously to stand by and watch the humans be sacrificed and to rise up and stop it? But what was the other option? That Heaven was telling lies? 

Castiel tried to focus on the buzzing of the bees, the invisible trails between flowers, the beams of sunlight, the smell of sap, the bacteria and dirt floating in the air-- anything but the treasonous thoughts assailing him. The thoughts made his Grace churn and his wavelengths tangle uncomfortably. He wished he could fly to his nest in Heaven for a rest, but the bone-deep ache in his wing made him wary to even twitch the appendage. And there was still blood on his vessel. He could feel it, in between each of the fingers and matting the hair and slicking the face like tear tracks. 

He wasn’t sure how long he spent there, alone and tired and afraid, but after what seemed like an eternity, he felt hands roughly grab his vessel’s arms. He was brought back to Heaven, and his questions stopped as the heavy thoughts and doubts and memories were finally taken from his head. 

* * *

“Castiel.”

The angel started guiltily at the sound of his name. He turned slowly. “Hello, Balthazar.” 

“Watching the bees again, I see.” Balthazar’s tone was light, but his Grace was withdrawn, and there was something hard in his vessel’s eyes. 

Castiel’s vessel’s lips twitched. He knew Balthazar didn’t understand why Castiel kept finding himself here, in fields with flowers and bees. If he was being honest, Castiel wasn’t completely sure why, either. Castiel just knew that in these quiet moments when he was surrounded by buzzing and pollen and determined bees, he always felt like he was on the brink of learning something. Something new, something revolutionary and important, something about Heaven and himself and God. It was like all he had to do was ask the right questions and he would be told what he was doing wrong. Not knowing how to put his explanation into words, Castiel gave his brother a curt nod to say  _ yes, I’ve been watching the bees again. _

“Typical,” Balthazar scoffed before looking Castiel up and down. “What isn’t typical is you disobeying orders to do it.”

Castiel shifted awkwardly. “Disobeying is a strong word,” he said quietly. “Delaying is the one I would use.”

“A distinction that would matter only in your head,” Balthazar returned. “You know what Heaven would have to say about this.” 

Castiel stayed silent. A little ways away, a bee accidentally tumbled while burrowing into the inner workings of a flower. It landed on a petal on its back, and Castiel watched as it clumsily turned over onto its feet before flying to the next one. 

“Castiel.”

“It’s wrong.” 

“It is a  _ tower,”  _ Balthazar snapped. “It doesn’t matter.”

A pang of bitterness reverberated through his Grace. He didn’t bother to hide it the way Balthazar was doing with his own Grace. “It does matter. The humans are  _ coming together,  _ becoming something more than mere individuals and individual city-states. The Tower of Babel is a great accomplishment, a symbol of how far the humans have come and how much more they can improve. Taking away their unity and autonomy would be cruel.”

“So you’re just going to sit here? What good will that do?”

“It gives me time to come up with a plan.”

Balthazar groaned. “All those years of me trying to convince you to sneak down to Earth with me, trying to convince you to throw caution to the wind, and this is what breaks you? A pile of  _ dung?”  _

“We’re just soldiers,” Castiel murmured. “When we come together, it’s because we plan to attack and slaughter. The humans, they’re not doing it in the name of destruction. They’re unifying themselves in the name of creation.”

“Yes, and making themselves to be gods in the process. They are not gods, Castiel. You heard Heaven’s demands. If you don’t call for the destruction of the tower, you’ll be punished and someone else will destroy the blasted thing anyway.”

The angel responded without looking away from the field. “They’re very resilient. And resourceful.”

Balthazar paused. “Humans?”

“The bees,” Castiel corrected. He turned to fully face Balthazar. “What do you suppose they’re doing?”

Balthazar’s eyes narrowed. His vessel’s jaw worked, and for a second Castiel thought the other would admonish him. “Mindlessly gathering nectar, I would assume.” 

Castiel turned back to the field, his vessel’s brows furrowing. The phrase ‘mindlessly flitting from flower to flower’ rose in the back of his consciousness, but he wasn’t sure where it had come from. He didn’t remember ever thinking or saying it, and angels never forgot anything. Their memories were eternal.

“No,” Castiel said quietly, more to himself than to Balthazar. “That’s not it. They’re not mindlessly flying between random flowers. It’s more than that. The bees are determined, purposefully flying to beauty. The softness of the petals, the loudness of the colours, the sweet and calming smell of the nectar, the flowers which positively trill with life. They fight their way toward this beauty, and as they do, they help spread goodness and beauty via pollination.” 

Castiel closed his eyes, willing his brother to understand. The plants’ main goal is to reproduce, and the bees help them do it, which is kind. The bees then take the flower’s gift of nectar and use it to make beauty of their own: honey. The secret to being a good living creature was not to mindlessly follow orders, but to fight for what is beautiful and to introduce your own beauty and kindness into the world. 

That  _ had  _ to be it. It was the message he had been waiting for all this time, and it felt right. Warm and kind and doubtlessly  _ right.  _

“You have your orders, Castiel.” 

The angel’s head snapped to his brother’s. A tendril of anger whipped inside his Grace-- Balthazar hadn’t understood him, after all. “Since when did you care about carrying out orders?”

Balthazar shook his head in frustration. “We’re not fledglings anymore. There are consequences now. If anyone heard you talking like this…” 

Castiel’s head felt heavy.  _ ‘ I wish… I wish…’ _

He wasn’t sure what he wished, exactly, but there was a longing deep down inside him, a longing that hurt so much he couldn’t bear the thought of acknowledging it. He hoped it would go away soon. Other angels didn’t feel like this.

“The universe is a big place, you know.” 

Castiel frowned. “What?”

“A couple of outcasts could surely get lost in it, wouldn’t you say?” Balthazar said, shooting Castiel a look that went completely over the angel’s head. “And I doubt they’d be missed.”

“I don’t understand.” Had Balthazar gone back to talking about the bees? What could make a bee an outcast?

“No,” Balthazar said slowly. “No, I don’t suppose you would. You will one day, though. Come and find me when you do.” 

“Alright,” Castiel said dubiously. He wasn’t very good at riddles, so it would probably take him a while to solve Balthazar’s. ‘ _ What makes a bee an outcast?’ _

Balthazar’s shoulders moved almost imperceptibly. Castiel couldn’t see the other’s wings while they were in the Ethereal plane, but he knew Balthazar was getting ready to take flight. 

Balthazar hesitated at the last second. 

“Take care of yourself, Cassie.” 

Then he was gone. 

* * *

Castiel’s head pounded as he collapsed, vessel and all, onto the ground. 

His vessel kept twitching without him telling it to, his Grace too raw to stop the twitching and the blood leaking from the corners of his eyes. 

Something had gone wrong. His head was only half empty. Something had stopped them. 

_ ‘Them?’  _ Castiel wondered, but the thought coincided with a particularly bad throb from behind the vessel’s eyes, and he avoided the line of thought like it would cause another round of pain. 

He had known he needed to fly away, and he had, but he hadn’t known where to. He didn’t know where he was or where they were or where he should be. 

His head. Half empty. Half filled with blood and doubt and blasphemy. It was  _ wrong. _

What was wrong? The empty? The doubt? 

The location? Was this where he needed to be? 

No. No, of course not. He should go back home. He should go back to Heaven.

Heaven. Safe. Home. Family. They always took care of him in Heaven. They took care of him and strapped him down and emptied his head of all the blood. Heaven always made sure he was a good angel whether he wanted to be or not. 

Castiel sobbed, fingers clutching desperately at the dirt pressing around him. 

He couldn't tell. Were those good things? Everything was so muddled. His brain wasn’t right. His thoughts were supposed to be an entire ecosystem, a billion billion different interactions happening simultaneously in a neat and specific order that he had complete mastery over. It was nothing but calamity now, everything dying and existing and cleaving together and apart, all at once and all one at a time with meanings that he hadn’t assigned. Who had assigned them? Who had messed with the ecosystem of his head?

_ Castiel could not breathe.  _ The blood was trickling down his brain stem and into his throat.

_ Was  _ it his throat? He couldn’t remember if he had had a throat before. 

Castiel screamed at the sound of a drill. His body or his not-body, he couldn’t remember which anymore, flinched away and his calamity of a head banged into something hard and rough.

A tree. He could remember some things. It was called a tree. Was it part of the ecosystem inside his head or the ecosystem outside? He was still screaming, but it wasn’t a scream so much as a whimper now. He was so light-headed. What had the whirring fire taken from his head? What more did it want? 

_ ‘Whirring?’  _ No, it wasn’t whirring anymore. Nothing so mechanical. It was more like… like buzzing. The whirring burning blurring charring of the drill was done for now. 

He didn’t want the forest fire anymore. It was  _ his  _ thoughts in  _ his  _ head and they weren’t allowed to take them anymore! He wasn’t supposed to be empty!

More buzzing. Castiel wished he could remember whether he needed to breathe. Would breathing fan the flames? He needed the burning to stop. Could he douse the fire in blood? 

What was that buzzing? He tilted his head up, trying to keep his wits. The bright white light was not coming from the sterile white walls, the walls with the chair and the straps and the forest fires in his head. It was from the sun. The sun would allow the trees inside his head to grow back, so long as he didn’t let  _ them  _ empty his head with the burning flames anymore. Couldn’t. He couldn’t do that again. 

Castiel tilted his head up and he saw it. Buzzing. Way above his head, the tree-bee place. 

The… comb. Honeycomb. Hove.  _ Hive.  _ It was the beehive. He couldn't help but smile. He had gotten the message in the end. Where were the flowers? Castiel’s head lolled, but he couldn’t see them anywhere. Oh well. 

He hoped he hadn't bothered the bees too much with his screaming and his fires. But the bees were kind, and Castiel knew that they wouldn’t be mad and sting him even if he had. 

Maybe they should, though. Castiel wasn’t sure why-- his head was still fuzzy and burning-- but he had the feeling he had hurt a lot of people in his life. The bees weren’t guilty of that. They didn’t hurt anyone. They only used their stingers if they absolutely had to. Bees didn’t hurt people, they spread beauty, he was sure of it. The bees were everything that he was not. 

Castiel relaxed into the tree. He didn’t have to hurt anyone anymore. He was free now. His fires would burn out, ecological succession would occur and his thoughts would grow back. It would be okay now. 

Except it wasn’t okay. 

In the end, the angels would find him. 

The fires would be relit and his head would be emptied once more.

* * *

“Cas?”

The angel tore his attention away from the rumbling purr of the Impala. “Yes, Dean?”

The Winchester briefly met his gaze in the rearview mirror. “What’s with the bees?”

Castiel shifted. “What do you mean?”

“You’re obsessed with them,” Dean said. “Why?”

Cas turned away, looking out the window. He hadn’t been aware he needed a reason why. His head always changed when he thought about bees. It… hurt, if he was honest. There were things he had forgotten, layered away in the depths of his subconscious, things he could never quite grasp. Questions that needed answered. A riddle with no solution. A goal left unmet. 

“Because they’re the very best part of me,” the angel said after a long silence. 

  
  



End file.
